Is there a plumber in the house?

How many lesbians does it take to fix a washing machine? I know the one about the light bulb. It takes 3 lesbians to change a light bulb. 1 to hold the ladder, 1 to change the bulb and 1 to write a folk song about it. Yeah, well, there will be no folk songs written about our f-ing High Efficiency, front-loading, fanchy-shmancy, 3 year-old washing machine. The ditty I’m composing is more along the lines of a heavy-metal piece, as it were, which features a healthy amount of cursing, angry screaming and a grand finale beating with a pipe that I’ve ripped out of the insides of my washing machine...with my teeth. For an encore, I’ll take all the clothes that were left sitting in the puddle of cold water at the bottom of the drum before break down and twist them into sopping wet whips which I shall unleash in a public flogging upon the salespeople who sold us this lemon in the first place.

Overreacting? It’s true. My stress levels are high. Surely, there are more horrible fates than a defunct washing machine. Bad timing. We’re off to Boston tomorrow morning to visit my sister in Jewton for Passover (That would be Newton for any of you unfamiliar with the high concentration of bagel shops and Chinese food restaurants in Newton). And, before every trip, I do all the laundry. It’s what I do. It’s all I do, actually. I’m a shite housewife. I hate cooking and cleaning and most things associated with house-care except for laundry. While it would be a stretch to say that I enjoy laundry, I don’t mind it. The house may be littered with toys, but we always have clean towels and clean underwear.

Gabriella and I just spent the last half hour in the basement wringing out cold, wet clothes so that we could throw them in the dryer. Boo hoo. Poor me. You can put away your violins. A little manual labor never hurt anyone. But my hands are frozen and I’ve used muscles in phalanges that have not been used since, well, I don’t know that they have ever been used, and I’ve used many a phalange in my day. And let's not forget that I'm not operating at 100% thanks to the nail incident.

It’s during moments like these that I have to take pause and be grateful that I don’t have to carry laundry in a basket on my head and wash my clothes in a river.
First of all, I have a very small head. Second, that would just plain suck. I’m also thankful to Gabriella, my little peasant bride from the hills of Sicily, who is a much better wringer-outer than I am.

I don’t apologise for my lack of physical skills. Not my fault! My people weren’t allowed to own land. We were forced to become merchants and bankers and handle the dirty money no one else wanted to touch. True story. Point being, we’ve not been in the proverbial fields for ages, and, therefore, I’m not very handy. So sue me.

We should have been packed by now. Instead, we’ll be throwing everything in the mini-van in a mad panic hoping to make good time. We’ll have to call the plumber from the road to make sure that he can squeeze us in as soon as we get back. He’s Italian. We’ll be in good hands.